Wildlife artist James Meger, whose oil and acrylic renditions of canvasback ducks and other fowl sparked a 30-year-plus painting career that found an appreciative audience nationwide, has died of cancer. He was 69 and lived in Edina. A graduate of St. John's University in Collegeville, Minn., where he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree, Meger was an Army officer in Vietnam for 14 months before returning to the University of Minnesota for a master's in art education. For about nine years, he taught art in Louisiana and Minnesota schools before quitting to paint full time.